Your View: Apply skepticism to both sides of energy argument

Richard Bartlett's recent letter to the editor contains several factual errors ("Your View: Congress is bought off and we pay the price," Feb. 20). While some of them cannot be addressed adequately in a suitably short response, a few examples are so egregious that leaving them unaddressed does harm to the process of building the necessary consensus to develop sound public energy policy.

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By LEE NASON

southcoasttoday.com

By LEE NASON

Posted Feb. 27, 2013 at 12:01 AM

By LEE NASON

Posted Feb. 27, 2013 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

Richard Bartlett's recent letter to the editor contains several factual errors ("Your View: Congress is bought off and we pay the price," Feb. 20). While some of them cannot be addressed adequately in a suitably short response, a few examples are so egregious that leaving them unaddressed does harm to the process of building the necessary consensus to develop sound public energy policy.

Bartlett argues that fossil fuels get "subsidies." This is untrue. Fossil fuel businesses get precisely the same tax treatment that all natural resource companies get. They do not receive checks from the federal government and, in fact, pay taxes to state and federal governments that can be as high as four times their profit levels. The only energy businesses that get federal subsidies are the so-called green energy businesses like Solyndra or a host of other failed or failing eco-tech companies.

Bartlett decries the anecdotal health hazards associated with fracking. There have been a couple of incidents where mishandled wastewater/chemicals or leaky pipelines have caused some problems; given that we have been fracking for decades and have drilled tens of thousands of fracking wells, a few accidents are inevitable. But former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson — no friend of fossil fuels — has stated in congressional testimony that there have been no "proven cases where the fracking process itself has affected water." The real question should be, "Is fracking safer for the environment than, say, solar or wind energy?"

Bartlett states that fossil fuels are "100 percent more harmful than wind or solar." This is false and misleading. All energy harvesting operations have some negative consequences and wind and solar are not exempt. Just to mention one of the most serious problems, solar panels require the (highly hazardous) mining of rare earths, the (highly hazardous) use of the rare earths in the manufacture of solar panels, and the (highly hazardous) disposal of the toxic wastes from manufacturing and disposal of used solar panels. According to a recent Microsoft News article, 46 million tons of toxic waste was produced by solar companies in California between 2007 and mid-2011. We do not have data on the mining deaths in China where the rare earths are usually produced but we can be certain that they are significant. Solar and wind also create land-use problems, result in the deaths of 440,000 birds annually (according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), and cost taxpayers/consumers two to four times as much as fossil fuels.

Bartlett claims that 12 inspectors in Wyoming cannot possibly oversee the safe operation of Wyoming's 55,000 natural gas wells. This is obviously false. In all the literature I could Google, I only found one instance of anything amiss in Wyoming's fracking wells and that one, in Pavillion, may or may not have been caused by the fracking operation. It seems quite clear that there are sufficient safeguards in effect in Wyoming to prevent harm to the public and to the environment.

Bartlett goes on to argue that our politicians are bribed by fossil fuel companies to provide government support. While this might be true, fossil fuel companies get no subsidies or special tax treatment for their efforts. But Bartlett fails to mention how the anti-fracking efforts are sometimes funded by such benevolent forces as the government of Abu Dhabi (which has an evident self-interest in suppressing American natural gas production). Bartlett also fails to mention the major lobbying forces that have been so successful in directing public funds to their private enterprises — often owned and operated by bundlers and campaign contributors for major Democratic elected officials — via "green grants."

Well-informed citizens should indeed by skeptical of claims made by fossil fuel producers and should be concerned about self-serving lobbying. But well-informed citizens should be equally skeptical of claims made by "green" energy companies and their self-serving lobbying. Let's have a fair playing field here.